Boiler-Plate
by Theleyak
Summary: Bakuda's campaign of terror marks the beginning of a new cape.
1. Arc 01:Copper

David Fraser was late for class. He moved with a gait that couldn't really be called a run, not with one hand balancing a foam cup of scalding-hot coffee, the other clutching the strap of a half-zipped bookbag. Still, he was moving faster than a walk, long, gangly legs eating up the ground with careless strides. A textbook wobbled on the edge of the fabric, then fell with a clatter. David cursed under his breath and skidded to a halt. He bent to snatch up the book from the cool, dew-slick stairs before carrying on into the lecture hall.

The blast came a moment later. A burning hot wall of fire and air plucked David from the steps and threw him into the air. He had enough time to think _What the fuck?_ as his head slammed into the gnarled oak tree that had stood beside the building for the last hundred and fifty years.

A rhythmic beeping noise woke me. It sounded like my alarm clock, but slower. It was a heart monitor, of course. Why had it been so hard to think of that? Memories came back, reluctant as if they were stuck in molasses. I remembered going to class, trying not to spill my coffee. There had been a loud bang, too loud to be just my _Intermediate Structural Engineering_ textbook dropping. And then I had been…flying?

I realized that my head hurt a lot. I tried to move my hands to clutch my forehead, but they were just too heavy to do anything like that. Panic gripped me. I heard the beeping speed up as my heart rate increased. I must have hit my head really hard. People could die of that sort of thing— the brain is one of the most vulnerable parts of the human body. Maybe if I wore a helmet…no, that would look stupid. A set of surgically implanted plates, though. Weave them through just right…

The exact specifications floated through my head. I could see how the pieces would go together, what materials I would use. The surgery involved was fuzzier, but manageable. I could combine carbon-fiber steel with Kevlar and— how did I know these things? I was a mechanical engineering student, not some kind of—of…

The thought struck me, and my headache went from intolerable to white-hot. A roaring sound filled my ears and I cried out in pain, unable to do anything but writhe in agony. From a long way off, I heard the beeping sound get louder and faster, then a commotion of voices as people bustled into the room. I had a fraction of a second to be relieved as I blacked out again.

When I woke up again, my head was still aching, but it was more manageable now. I felt lightheaded, and a little drunk. They'd definitely medicated me with something strong. There were a whole bunch of buttons on a thick remote lying next to my hand, with the call button taped to the other. It was easy enough to figure out which one would elevate the bed— I could see the circuit board in my mind, imagine how the wires would be laid out for optimal performance. On the first button I tried, the bed's electric motor (a simple heavy duty DC engine) whined and the bed angled my back upwards to better survey the room. It was the standard hospital room I'd seen once before when I'd gotten my tonsils out. A few flowers sat on the display table, as well as a small stack of "get well" cards.

I was still reeling in shock at having suddenly developed powers, and getting left alone in a silent room gave me a lot of time to think. It was fair to conclude that I was some breed of Tinker— the way I could just _see_ how things fit together was as good an explanation as any. Unless, of course, I was some sort of weird Thinker/Tinker cross, just able to understand the way things operated and nothing else. The obnoxious thing about powers is of course that they don't come with any sort of instruction manual.

I'd always wondered what it would like to have powers, of course. What kind of kid wouldn't? Still, while the odds of getting your own set of powers statistically climbed, a lot of that was just due to existing capes or villains having kids of their own. The Endbringers did their bit too, of course, but unless you lived in a major city or some other targetable place, odds were slim you'd ever see one.

And that brought me around to wondering how the hell all this had happened. Sure, Cornell University wasn't the smallest college/town combo the world had ever seen, but Ithaca was a long damned way from most major cape activity, as far as I was aware. It could have been your usual run-of the mill terrorist, I supposed. There wasn't available to me at the moment, which mostly left me feeling tired again.

I woke up to hear my parents conversing in quiet tones near my bed. I felt worse than the last time, better than the first. The meds must have been wearing off, or I was in between doses. My dad stood over my mom, supporting her with one arm while she held my hand. His face was hard, but I knew he was just the stoic sort. I hoped he wasn't too worried. My mom, on the other hand, was a wreck. She saw me move, and her tear-stained, red-cheeked face came up from where she had been hunched over the bed. "Dave? Is he awake? Can you hear us? Davie, sweetheart, are you alright? Jefferey, is he alright?" she asked my dad.

"Mom, I'm fine." I tried to say. My mouth opened to speak, but the words wouldn't come out. I tried again. "Mmmmh…" No. Why was this so difficult? I tried again. "Mmmmh…" what was going on?

Eyes wide, my mom reached over and smacked the call button taped to my other hand. A few moments later, a nurse poked her head in. "Is everything alright, ma'am?"

"Why can't he speak?" she demanded. "What's wrong? I thought the doctor said he was just sleeping!"

"Ma'am, I need you to stay calm. I'll go get the doctor." She closed the door once more.

"Davie, sweetheart, can you hear me?" Mom asked.

I nodded. That seemed to work just fine.

"Are you in any pain?"

I shook my head.

"Can you move your hands? Can you wiggle your toes?"

I moved my hands and wiggled my toes to prove that indeed I could. Mom's face crumpled further, fresh tears spilling down her cheeks. "Jeff, he's all right." She sobbed. My dad held her close with one arm while he clutched my hand in the other. He nodded to me once, giving his usual _stay strong_ look. The doctor entered a few minutes later, pulling off one pair of latex gloves and slinging them into a trash can. He pulled another set out from a box on a small counter and came over to my bed. "What seems to be the matter?" he asked.

"He can't speak!" my mom exclaimed.

"Hmm." The doctor shined a light into my eyes, had me wiggle my fingers and toes again. He shone a light down my throat and took a look at my vocal cords. He prodded various parts of my body, asking if I could feel it each time. I nodded whenever he did, and at last he seemed satisfied.

"Well, with a head injury like his we of course took an MRI, but he seemed clean, other than that nasty concussion and a minor skull fracture. From everything we could see, there was no brain damage, but there's clearly nothing wrong with his nervous system, nor his throat and lungs. The only explanation I can give you is it would seem to be some kind of Aphasia, but for some reason the trauma isn't evident at all. We'll do a second MRI just to be sure, and I'll see about getting him some speech therapy. This seems a bit unusual, but I promise we'll have him talking again in no time."

Two weeks later and I was walking out of the hospital to the parking lot, flanked on either side by my parents, who seemed concerned that I was going to fall, even though I'd been able to walk for five days. I carried a small whiteboard with a dry-erase marker, which I was to use for the time being to communicate. I sat in the back of our station wagon while my dad drove us home, discussing with my mother what the best thing to do with me when we got home would be. I lay back against the headrest, picturing the best way to make the car more well-equipped to handle side-on impacts with horizontal K-bracing.

I still hadn't had the opportunity to test out my abilities, hospitals are always so clean that putting together random scraps wasn't really an option, and taking apart the millions of dollars of medical equipment probably would have been a bad idea. I hadn't told my parents, either. I figured maybe when we cured my speech disorder I could maybe sit them down and have a long discussion about the subject, but now wasn't going to be that time. We pulled into the driveway of my house, and my dad held the door open for me and I stepped out. I wanted to tell him I had Boca's Aphasia, my arms and legs still worked fine, but I didn't have the energy to deal with pulling out my stupid whiteboard and writing all that. So instead I just bowed my head and stepped out, then followed my mom inside.

"Do you want a snack? She asked. "Or maybe I should see if any of your friends have come in?"

I shook my head. "I just want to lie down for a bit." I wrote on the whiteboard, then headed off to my room.

It looked like a tornado made of plastic and wood shavings had hit, as my dad had finally gotten the space he always wanted for his model trains when I left. My bed was still in the corner, though, and I flopped onto it, closing my eyes. For approximately a bajillionth of a second, I felt so exhausted I could have slept for a week. But then I realized I was in a whole room full of scraps and shavings from all kinds of model train stuff. There were engines and low-gauge wire, and…

My eyes snapped back open and I rolled off the bed. I looked around at all the stuff lying around, and a model diesel locomotive caught my eye. It was just a shell, really. Most of its parts were strewn around, with a couple of them looking a little charred. I grabbed a few tools and set to work. Not even an hour later, the locomotive was in better working order than it had been when it came out of the box. I'd added a few small improvements of my own, mostly just little resistors and such to guard against electrical failure.

I set the locomotive down, feeling much better. Maybe I couldn't speak, but when I could, I was going to have the best news ever for my parents. Smiling, I set the locomotive back on its track and headed back out of the room to where my parents were watching TV. I saw Cornell University, and the burnt-out hulk of the Engineering lecture hall. A reporter was saying something to the camera, but all I saw was the headline at the bottom of the screen:

"A New Villain: Mad bomber Bakuda strikes a second time"


	2. Arc 02: Bronze

After that little bombshell —if you'll pardon the pun— The issue of my return to college became an impassable one. "You'll be staying home until that awful woman gets caught." My mom said, in a tone which brooked no argument. My dad just nodded. My dad took the minivan to pick up my stuff from the dorm, and my mom had to go back to work the next day, which left me alone in the house. I woke up around ten o'clock to a note, as well as directions to find food in the refrigerator. It turned out to be homemade nachos, my favorite.

I reheated the food in the microwave and booted up our family's antique PC. My own laptop had been in my backpack and had been subsequently destroyed by the blast. I hoped I'd be able to pull the hard drive out at least, but for now I was stuck using the dinosaur.

I pulled up Parahumans Online and started digging. The plate of nachos evaporated as I clicked through dozens of articles about capes, by capes, and so on. I'd never really been a big follower of the whole parahumans thing; it had always seemed less interesting than my own dream of being a materials engineer. The thought set me back on my heels for a minute. Did I even _want_ to be a cape? Sure, there was all the fame and glory that could come with it— if you didn't get drowned by Leviathan, crisped by Behemoth, or brainwashed by Simurgh. There were a thousand villains waiting out there who would have no problem with doing all kinds of horrible things to me with their powers. It would probably be easier and safer to just say nothing about my abilities and just keep my head down and stay the course I'd already set out for myself: Bachelor's in materials engineering, maybe a Masters, a nice house and a job working for whoever needed a new kind of steel that week.

But that brought me to the other hand. What if I turn out to be really, really good? I still wasn't even sure what my power entailed, nor what its limits were. How could I resist finding out just what I could do? I'd never been very good at sports or anything competitive, really. But with powers, that could change. I couldn't deny it— for the first time I had the potential to be _significant_. So I went back to searching. Hours later, I heard the garage door rumble, and realized my dad had come back. I erased the browser history of the last seven hours, went to Youtube, and clicked through a bunch of long documentaries. On the last one, I fast-forwarded to about three-fourths of the way through the video, then leaned back in my chair and adopted my very best couch-potato expression.

"Dave!" my dad yelled. "Can you take a few bags?"

"Sure!" I tried to say. For fucks sake. I scowled and grabbed the whiteboard, then hurried over to the garage where my dad was struggling to carry four massive duffel bags in one trip. "Just those over there." He indicated them with a jerk of his chin.

I nodded and picked up the indicated bags. They were heavy, packed in haste without any knowledge of how everything had gone in together. Following after my dad, we carried the bags to my room, where we grouped them in a pile near one corner. "We'll unpack later." My dad said. "That drive really tuckered me out." He sat down on my bed, which squeaked a bit. I sat cross-legged on the floor across from him, a bit nervous about letting him find out about the model train I'd fixed.

"By the way," my dad continued, "I found this while I was packing up your stuff."

He pulled the bottle of rum I'd bought a few weeks ago for a party that would have been last weekend. My eyes widened, but he just chuckled a bit. He went into the kitchen for a moment and came back with a bottle of coca-cola and two glasses. "Don't tell your mom about this." He smiled and poured a drink for each of us. With a toast, we each drank.

"Hell, if anyone deserves a shot, it's you right now." Dad continued. "Hell of a thing to be in your place."

I nodded, and scribbled on the whiteboard before holding it up. "I feel fine at least. Just wish I could talk again."

"I'm glad." He said. "I figure we'll have to call the semester a bust, but they ought to catch this Bakag— Baki— whatever woman before too long. If you don't feel safe there anymore, I'm sure we can look for another school. Your grades were excellent, so maybe you'll be able to squeeze an even bigger scholarship out this time."

I smiled. He patted my knee and rose. "I already booked an appointment with a Dr. Rockwell, starting tomorrow. When the doctor says it's okay for you to drive, we'll go up and get your car, but for now I'll be driving you."

I nodded again, scrawled "thanks, dad" on my whiteboard.

The first session of speech therapy went… less than well. Dr. Rockwell was a nice lady in her early forties, with the sort of kindly manner that I'd never seen in someone who wasn't a grandma before. We sat at the little round table in her office as she read my file on her computer.

"The hospital says you've gotten Broca's Aphasia from a nasty knock to the head." She commented. "We'll begin today with just a few simple exercises to try and see what the nature of this particular case is, and how we can start fixing it, does that sound good?"

I nodded.

"I'd like for you to try and speak as often as possible while you're here." She continued. "So let's try that again. "Does that sound good?"

"Y-yrrrrrh." I managed. My face burned.

"Don't worry about it." Dr. Rockwell soothed. "We all know that it's just your speech centers that have been affected, the rest of your brain works fine. No one will think the less of you here."

"Thhh."

"You're very welcome." She handed me a pen and a sheet of paper. "Now, can you write out your name for me?"

I wrote "David Fraser" in careful letters. Dr. Rockwell seemed surprised.

"That's unusual." She commented. "Often my patients have trouble writing words or sentences, but you don't seem to be having any trouble. Can you write the sentence 'the ball is red'?"

I shrugged and wrote "The ball is red" below my name.

"Hmm." She frowned. "Now, can you read that aloud for me?"

"Thhhh. Bbbb. Rrrr." I tried. Mom squeezed my hand beneath the table.

Dr. Rockwell was typing notes into her laptop. "This is unusual. I'd say you have moderate to severe aphasia, but somehow your actual language center seems completely fine. I'm also looking at your MRI, and there are several inconsistencies." She flipped the computer around, showing a black-and white image of what I took to be my brain.

"Unfortunately we don't have an MRI from before the accident for comparison." She went on. "But you can see here that the impact came to the back of your head, where this tissue is right here." She pointed. "Now, all that seems to be doing fine. Your vision is unimpaired, and your physical coordination seems to be fine." She pointed to a section closer to the front of my brain. "Now this is your speech center, and again it seems to be physically intact. "It's always possible that we've missed something, but there doesn't really seem to be any of the damage we would usually associate with a speech disorder."

"So what does all this mean?" my mom asked.

"It means that although the concussion and the speech impairment looked related at first glance, they don't seem to actually have the same cause." Rockwell answered. "Rather, that whatever reason David is unable to speak, something else must have happened to cause it. Perhaps a sympathetic reaction to the concussion, but the one is not a direct result of the other."

"What could it be, then?" My mom asked.

"There are a number of possibilities. Drugs would be my number one guess—" mom squeezed my hand again "—but his blood work was clean as a whistle. Perhaps a very, very small stroke caused by the impact, or perhaps even a simple panic reaction."

"Could it have been a trigger event?" Mom asked. I froze.

"No, I doubt it." Dr. Rockwell answered. "We don't fully understand them, of course, but as a general rule they seem to affect the body more often than the brain. Tinkers and Thinkers of course might seem different, and perhaps with a pre-accident MRI we could be certain, but for now that seems very unlikely. You haven't noticed any new powers, have you David?"

I shook my head, then remembered I was supposed to talk. "Nnn."

Mom visibly relaxed. "So you're saying the most likely reaction is some sort of mental…block?"

"Of the sort, yes." Dr. Rockwell agreed. "I would almost classify this as a sort of selective mutism, where the patient will remain unwilling to speak, no matter what the consequences might be."

My mom _tsked_ and smacked my arm. "David! You had us all worried! You're fine, you just have to start talking!"

"It's not that simple." Dr. Rockwell said. "I said that's what it looks like, but again the data doesn't match. Selective mutism usually doesn't come into play so late in development— usually it goes away under the right circumstances, or the child grows out of it. David's an adult —even a young one— and if he seems to be unable to speak on any occasion, we must again conclude that this isn't true either."

"So…" mom prompted.

"So I can't really be sure what this is." Dr. Rockwell said. "It seems to be an unusual case. I recommend he come here for speech therapy anyway, and we'll try a combination of treatment for Broca's Aphasia and selective mutism. In the meantime, I'll have to look further into this case."

The rest of the session was comprised of me trying to speak. The process resembled nothing so much as pulling teeth with a pair of rusty tweezers, as one grunt at a time I attempted to make sounds that resembled words. By the end, my throat was raw, despite having not uttered a single damn discernible sentence the entire time. Dr. Rockwell must have seen my frustration, for as we left she said, "It _will_ get better, David. You're young and intelligent, and something like this can't hold you back forever."

I just nodded. Wasn't like I could do much else. That weekend, me and Dad drove up to go snag my car from Cornell. We rolled up to the main entrance, which had a newly-erected barrier across it. A cop stood behind it, and walked over to the car's driver side window as we pulled up. I was driving, as Dad had considered it a good idea to check if I was able to drive before we turned around for the journey home.

"May I ask what your business is in the college this afternoon?" the cop asked.

I nodded and reached for my whiteboard.

"Hey!" the cop reached for his sidearm. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Officer, he's got aphasia." My dad explained from the passenger's seat.

"He's retarded?" the cop asked, confused. "Why's he driving, then?"

I flushed. Being called dumb was the one insult that always got to me— probably because being smart was about the only positive trait I had.

"He got a concussion from the bombing two weeks ago." My dad elaborated. "The doctors think his inability to speak is the result of that. I assure you, he's perfectly capable of driving, but we don't think staying the semester is a good idea. We're just here to pick up the other car."

"Right." Agreed the cop. "Sorry 'bout that. And I don't blame you for wanting to take the semester off— this Bakuda bitch isn't messing around."

"There have been more bombings?" Dad asked.

"Three total, now." The cop sighed. "First one was in the foyer of a lecture hall, the next one was in one of the classrooms themselves. This latest one was in a professor's office; we're just waiting for the media to swarm all over the story."

"I'm sorry to hear that." Dad said.

"Yeah." The cop sighed and pulled back the gate. "Well, if 'sorries' were fishes, I'd have twelve guys following me around and writing down everything I said. Have a nice day, stay safe."

I gave him a small wave and we hummed through the gate. I found my car easily enough, and we stopped in a nearby space to get out and stretch our legs before driving back. My dad glanced at my car.

"You sure it can get you all the way home?" he asked. "Maybe it's better if I drive it, you take my car back."

I shook my head. "It's my car." I wrote. "I can drive it."

He shrugged. "Keep your cell phone on, just in case."

I raised my eyebrows. His shoulders sagged a little. "…Right."


	3. Arc 02-1: Bronze

My car was an old Ford Focus, and was very much leaning towards the end of its life. I knew I was going to need a new one soon enough, but I wasn't looking forward to paying for a whole new vehicle. I'd had this one since my senior year of high school, so it had a lot of memories in it. I turned the key in the ignition and waited for it to start. The engine turned over once or twice, and I twisted the key just so, as I'd learned to do in order to get the engine to start. I hadn't realized it before, but it occurred to me that the locking mechanism was bent out of shape from such a long period of use. If I were to replace the mechanism with something sturdier, maybe a high-carbon steel rather than the low carbon stuff they usually made locks out of. With some additional bracing on two points near the edge of the mechanism sheath and a little solder on the wires…

I shook my head to clear it before my thoughts wandered too far. This drive might prove unfortunate if I couldn't keep my head on the road. Still, it occurred to me that maybe I wouldn't have to buy a new car after all. As a tinker, there was no question it was within my ability to repair the thing — probably add some laser guns or something while I was at it. For now, though, I just had to get the car home.

We left the college from the same gate, and I soon lost sight of Dad's car as we merged onto the highway. I set a CD in the player— a bit of Manowar was exactly the thing for a long drive home. I turned up the volume loud enough I wouldn't be distracted by thoughts of load-bearing screws and clutch cables as I headed down the road. I drove at a good clip, the mottled brown and white of the late spring countryside rushing past the windows.

It was a four-hour trip back, and I changed disks several times as I drove. It helped keep me from getting too distracted, as it tends to be hard to focus on gear ratios and hydraulic pressure when you've got heavy metal music blasting into your ears. However, the unfortunate side effect of this decision only later became apparent when I noticed my car slowing down. Pressing on the gas pedal was doing nothing to speed it up, so I put on my hazard lights and pulled over.

I turned off the Hammerfall CD that was playing and popped open the hood. I'd seen a sign a little ways back that there was a town within a few miles, if I could reach it I'd be able to get repairs. I stood in front of the engine and stared at it for a bit— if a Tinker ability could ever come in handy, it was here. Sure enough, designs for a better engine flowed into my mind. I could build a fusion reactor and add deuterium tanks here, or… A pumping cavity for an ultraviolet laser might fit over near the radiator, and…

This wasn't what I needed. I thought back to the way Jedi were supposed to focus on fixing the problem. _I need to get this engine to run… I need to get this engine to run…_

It was the alternator. I leaned into the engine and unscrewed a doodad I somehow knew instinctively to be at fault. I opened it up and twisted a few of its frayed wires back together, then replaced it. That would get me another thirty miles or so. This whole Tinker thing was going to be pretty handy, even if I didn't decide to be a cape.

I closed the hood and ease the car into the next town. It was about midway through the afternoon, and a little searching brought me to an automotive parts store without too much trouble. I walked in and started browsing the aisles. My ability hit me pretty hard about then. Everywhere I looked, patterns and ideas and inventions poured into my head, a million different combinations I could use to build all kinds of crazy things that no one had ever seen before. A giant railgun, a hovering weapons platform that could lift a whole skyscraper, or an automatic mining probe that could seek out metals and bring them up to whoever I wanted. I stumbled a bit, losing myself in my own head as I tried to imagine building all these things.

"Do you need help finding anything?" an employee asked me. As she came closer, she looked concerned. "Are you all right, mister?"

I managed a nod. _Focus_ , I told myself. I pictured what I would need to fix my car. A short list of items came to me. I considered the prices, and then asked myself, _what about if I wanted to_ improve _on what I had?_ A few more parts came to mind, still within a reasonable price. I walked about the store, picking up the items I needed, then ran them past the cashier. It felt a little rude to fill out the whole transaction without speaking to her, but cashiers as a general rule are accustomed to being ignored.

I headed back out to the parking lot and drove the car around to a spot behind the store's dumpster, out of sight from the street. After a quick glance to make sure there were no security cameras, I opened up the hood and installed the various parts I'd purchased. Of course I couldn't make any major modifications without pulling out the whole engine and taking it apart, but I was able to add a few components to the fuel feed and drive train to give me a bit more speed on the way home. I also took apart the radio and added a handy little jamming device to block the return of police radar guns. Don't ask me how it worked, I just built the thing.

The engine turned over beautifully when I turned the ignition, and I rolled away from that nameless little town back on my way home. With speed cameras and the like less of a concern, I spent most of the drive pushing past eighty miles an hour, and got home just a half hour behind Dad.

"Run into any trouble?" Mom asked as I came into the kitchen.

I shook my head.

"That's good. Car still holding up?"

I nodded.

"That's good. Are you hungry? I could start dinner."

I shook my head. She sighed, but it was quiet enough I could pretend mot to have heard.

Things fell into a routine more or less after that. I would wake up late and drive to speech therapy.

I went past the living room and grabbed my laptop from its bag before doubling back and joining my dad on the couch. He glanced over before his attention returned to college football. It was tedious, but I was going to have to look for something new to do over the summer, as the second bombing at Cornell had damaged the lab I had been set to intern in.

I flipped open the machine and started looking for summer semester programs near our house, where I might make up at least some of my lost semester. My hometown wasn't terribly close to any schools, and all the nearest ones tended to be the rural sorts of colleges— lots of environmental studies or forestry and suchlike. Not much in the way of engineering classes without looking further afield. I reset my search parameters and cast out a wider net of searches. My Google-fu had always been pretty strong, and I had a suspicion my Tinker ability was giving me a slight edge as my cursor seemed to fall of its own accord on a link labeled "Brockton Bay Engineering internships."

I opened the page, and scrolled through. Most asked for more qualifications than I had, but a single entry caught my eye— or maybe it was Tinker bullshit again. Either way, as I read through the requirements and duties, it looked like the perfect fit. A recycling company was looking for an analyst to evaluate the quality and properties of the scrap metal it bought, to be reviewed later by an actual professional who would decide which was the most advantageous source to buy. It would require the bare minimum of person-to-person contact, communication taking place via written reports. I would just have to drive out to various scrap merchants and evaluate their wares. It wasn't engineering in the strictest sense of the word —more like metallurgy with a dash of chemistry— but it was well within my own talents. Smiling, I selected the application button and filled out the form. If I was lucky, I'd know by May.

Until then, I had research, design, and preparation to do. I cracked my knuckles and summoned up my Google-fu once more. Logging in to Parahumans Online, I headed over to the tag labeled "Tinker" and set about researching. Tinkers all had a specialty— that I already knew. The one oddity appeared to be Dragon, for although she was without question a programming genius, she had also done some pretty kick-ass architecture in the case of the Birdcage, not to mention her drones and a bunch of other, smaller accomplishments. No one on the forum had any real clue on how exactly Dragon managed all these things, although one nut-job proposed that Dragon was an AI and we were all living inside her simulated world, Matrix-style.

I found a list of the different subcategories of tinkers— something I hadn't been aware of before. It seemed that like most powers, the effects of being a tinker could be detrimental, as well. Chaos tinkers, for one thing couldn't actually control whatever they built, or mad scientist tinkers had an atrophied sense of risk/reward. So far I hadn't felt very chaotic or obsessive, so that was one more bullet dodged. I jumped as my Dad shifted, but he was just turning off the TV.

"I'm headed to bed, turn off the light when you're done." He said, to which I nodded.

When he was gone, I closed Chrome and opened up AutoCad. This was going to be the fun part. I sketched out a rough human figure, about the same size and shape as myself— five foot elevenish, a hundred and forty pounds. Armor was the first concern, obviously. Scale armor seemed to be the right way to go, providing better protection than chain, but without the colossal weight and inflexibility of plate. I kept it as light as possible, since I'm not very strong. Wearing forty pounds of steel was just out of the question— I wouldn't be able to walk carrying that much weight. At first I made the scale tight and form-fitting, but I scrapped that idea moments later. Instead, I redrew the lines of the armor to cover a somewhat larger volume than I was. I sloped it outwards towards the waist— not enough to inhibit movement, but wide enough that the resulting body looked very much unlike my own.

No, that was bad too. I closed my eyes. I erased the lines again and redrew a new design entirely. This one was uncurved, uncompromising. Rigid lines and blocky protrusions defined it on every angle, like a robot from a 60's science fiction movie. The arms I kept as scale plating, to keep them as movable as possible, ending with chainmail gloves. The legs I armored to the knee, with some light chain mail down to boot height. It wasn't as mobile as I would have liked, but it would be tough as hell— those plates, made of 5083-H32 aluminum plating would stop most incoming impacts. Aluminum was weaker than steel, but it was lighter and had a high albedo, making it better for deflecting lasers and other light-based weapons.

The helmet I saved for last, of course. It would be made of steel, covered in a thin layer of aluminum plate just to keep the color the same. Beneath the steel, I added a few inches of foam padding— it was surprising how many heroes had forgotten that vital part of a helmet. The faceplate would be made of a thick steel grating, like a fencer's mask but much more durable. I colored in the design, just to see the effect. It was an awkward-looking thing, a flat cylindrical torso, with two scale-armored arms and stubby-looking legs. It looked like the fucking Tin Man from _Wizard of Oz_ , minus his funnel-hat and axe.

Dignity be damned, it was a solid design nonetheless. That rounded torso serves as a rough sort of sloped armor, and because it had a lot of clearance from my body within, I'd be able to add all sorts of gadgets, as well as cross-bracing, internal padding, and a host of other systems a skintight suit had to either mount outside the armor, unless the entire thing was scaled up several times (and that had its own issues). The arms were mobile, and the torso shell wasn't so fat that I wouldn't be able to reach all the way around it. I considered the design for a moment longer, then yawned. It was almost two in the morning. I saved the file, closed my computer, and headed to bed.

I woke up the next morning and took a moment to look over the file by daylight— I could've missed something. I opened up my laptop once more. "Untitled project 1". I paused for a moment and thought. I could try "Tin Man", but that was a) stupid, b) someone had probably already done that and c) likely to be copyrighted by someone with a lot of money. Instead, I looked at the outline of the costume itself. Just for a second, I banished all the numbers and calculations and figures from my mind, trying to think of the image I wanted this thing to convey. I typed into the Save As function for a minute, then stepped back in satisfaction.

"Boiler-Plate," the file said.


	4. Arc 03: Iron

After I closed the file once more, I checked my email. A message had come in from Empire Recycling, the company I had applied to earlier. They had accepted my application; orientation began May 15th. That gave me just about two and a half months to prepare before I went to Brockton Bay. Once there, I planned to contact the PRT and see if I could work something out. Of course, I'd have to establish myself a bit first. A cape with even some experience would be a hell of a lot more attractive than where I was at the moment.

Starting a career as a cape is tricky, especially when you're a tinker. I had to plan with care, because unlike most other kinds of capes, I had no way to pull a trick out of my ass. Everything depended on anticipating possible situations before they arose and preparing countermeasures to any imaginable threat. Therefore, designing the costume took a lot of time and effort. I needed something that would be warm in winter and cold in summer, that would serve as a sort of command hub for whatever other devices I ended up making. And, of course, it needed to be the most indestructible armor I could come up with.

All those things would have been doable, had it not been for one unfortunate factor. My parents, while accustomed to my habits of tinkering with small devices and spending hours on the computer, nonetheless would have gotten a little suspicious if I showed up with an entire homemade air conditioner or something. As a result, the suit remained a tantalizing design on my computer, except for a few minor components I was able to assemble here and there just out of curiosity.

Instead, I worked on my car. This was much easier to explain than some new project; it was an old machine, and had always needed a bit of maintenance here and there. It made a good test bed, too— plenty of horsepower to play with, a durable, self-contained electrical grid, and so on. The first and most obvious thing I did was fix the engine. I reinforced the crankshaft, thickened the piston walls, a host of other minor adjustments. I moved on to a few devices of my own, too— a small remote control function that let me summon the car if I was ever in a tight spot. Not the most earth-shattering device, but I had a feeling it would come in handy. I strengthened the chassis, the door locks, and fixed that weird bit of the ignition that never quite worked right.

Fixing the car also gave me some inkling as to exactly what my tinker abilities specialized in— armor. As I worked, my head would swam with images of new types of plating, alloys, heat-treated and high-carbon steels. If you had asked me, I'd have said with contempt that Kevlar was about as durable as tissue paper, and half as structurally sound. With the right metals, I could have crafted machines to outlast the Pyramids of Giza. Reinforced chassis, heavy-gauge springs, and a layered plating of my own design made it about as durable as a World War 2 tank— even the windshield. Layers of ultra-fine carbon, gridded and woven behind the automotive glass made it bulletproof, while transparent Aluminum oxide gave it rigidity. If I ever hit a tree in this thing, it was the tree that would have to worry.

It wasn't all rainbows and gumdrops, of course. The bane of my existence during this time was made of two things: economics and speech therapy. Getting the materials to make anything was a tedious, frustrating, and often expensive business. While any tinker could make the parts they needed over time, a good shortcut was usually to buy at least some components already built, then modify them as circumstances demanded. I knew tinkers sometimes were outed by hardware stores they frequented, or even by something as dumb as forgetting to file off the serial number from parts they hadn't made themselves. So I had to split my purchases up among a solid dozen hardware stores, and in a tiny-ass town like mine that was a difficult business.

Thus a lot of my parts had to be from…supplementary sources. Illegal dumping, out in the countryside, is a frequent eyesore. But it was also one I could use. Plenty of old appliances to be found in such sites, from toasters to lawnmowers. It wasn't the best quality stuff by anyone's definition, and quite often I had to push my powers to the limit, finding a substitute part for a substitute part for a substitute part in the machine I was building. My formal training as a structural engineer came in handy, working in concert with my newfound power— tinkers don't always understand what they're doing. It always irked me when I had to trust blindly in my abilities, relying on crazy stuff like cosmic background radiation or earth's exact position in the galaxy to cajole a particular connection into joining.

Of course, there were a lot of other confusing, annoying things going on while I was fixing the car. The first was after my dad hung up the phone and called Mom and I into the living room.

"I've just been on the phone with our insurance agent." He explained. "Our policy only covers two months of therapy sessions— any more than that and we'll have to pay out of pocket."

"Can we afford that?" my mom asked.

Dad shook his head. Mom reached out and squeezed my hand.

 _It's not like it's—_ I signed, then reached for the ASL book on the coffee table. _—Helping anyway._ I finished after a minute.

"Oh, honey." My mom said, pulling me into a hug. "We'll fix this, I promise. No matter what."

 _It could be_ —I paused to check the book again— _permanent. We still_ —checked the book— _don't know_ —checked the damn book— _what caused it._

"Let's not think like that for now." My dad said. "The second MRI Dr. Rockwell ordered still shows that your brain is working fine, so we know there's no permanent damage. Promise me you'll keep trying."

 _I promise._ I signed.

Still, therapy stayed the same as ever— lots of attempts at speaking in anything except grunts. No dice. At our last session, Dr. Rockwell said, "Well, just keep doing those exercises. It's still possible that you'll have a breakthrough one day and all this will seem like no big deal."

 _Thanks_. I signed, before I climbed back into my wonderfully modified car and roared off.

Not more than a week later, I was packing to head to my internship in Brockton Bay. After dropping off my stuff in the apartment, I pulled in to the parking lot at Empire Recycling. I grabbed my whiteboard (still easier than expecting someone to know ASL) and headed inside.

"May I help you?" the secretary asked. I nodded, and wrote on the whiteboard. "I'm David Fraser. I'm here to start my internship."

"Oh, that's excellent!" she exclaimed. "You're much earlier than we'd hoped. Let me call Mister Lesterton."

She punched a few button son her phone. "Mr. Lesterton? One of the interns has just arrived. Yes. No." She glanced up at me, then lowered her voice. "The…special one."

I flushed. She looked up again. "He's down…the…hall. Fourth" —she held up four fingers—"on the right. Do you need me to lead you there?"

There was nothing I could do. I was incapable of voicing any sharp, sarcastic remark that came to my head —and none did. I could flip her off, which would probably cost me my internship, and leave a pretty big blemish on my record for potential employers. It _hurt_. Of course this wasn't the first time I'd been talked down to— it wouldn't be the last, either. It was the sheer helplessness of the encounter that really frustrated me.

I clenched my fists and turned on my heel to walk down the corridor. Mr. Lesterton's office was marked with a plaque bearing his name, and I knocked.

"Enter!" a quiet voice called.

Mr. Lesterton proved to be a youngish, powerfully-built man. He looked like he was about thirty, but his temples had begun to gray, and his eyes had the beginning of what promised to be deep wrinkles. "Mr. Fraser, correct?" he asked, not looking up from his brand-new, high-spec computer.

I nodded.

He kept typing as he spoke. "I suppose I ought to say it's good to see you, but I'm afraid I have some bad news for you."

I began writing "what would that be?" on my whiteboard, but he continued talking.

"You probably figured this out from Mrs. Temmell already, but the company only accepted you as an intern for PR purposes. Your qualifications _do_ meet our standards, but no-one…" he gestured apology. "No one wanted to work with you."

"What does that mean?" I wrote.

"It means you're on the books and all, but no one else volunteered to take you in. So at last I volunteered, but if I'm being honest I've got no work for you. I'm one of the negotiators with the scrapyards that supply us, but if you can't talk, I don't see how you'd manage to negotiate prices with me. So here's the deal. You can spend your hours in the office however you want— so long as you don't mess up any of my files. You'll have to smile for a few pictures at the end of the program, and I'll take you on a few negotiations so that it isn't a complete waste of your time. At the end of the day you get a decent recommendation and a vacation, and the company gets some decent PR for hiring the disabled kid. Sound good?"

"Works for me." I wrote, gritting my teeth.

"Good!" he tried an awkward smile, then returned to staring at his computer screen.

 _Well this is fucking ridiculous_ , I thought. It was also, as my dad would have said, business. I _could_ make a big fuss, but that would probably just get me dismissed with a bad recommendation. And if we're being honest, this was a job plenty of people would kill for. It was a little morally objectionable, but why should I care, so long as we both got what we wanted? There were much worse things they could have done.

So I said nothing, just opened up my laptop and started doing some research. I started on Armsmaster's suit, since he was one of the best Tinkers in the area. I noted that the design specialized in offense rather than defense, though. It had a host of exploitable weaknesses, provided you could survive getting close enough. I had considered making a similar suit for my own, but as I looked further into it, I realized that any attempt I made would be a poor copy.

The issue with powered armor was that unlike Armsmaster, I wasn't in very good physical condition. The suit I had designed was (as far as heavy armor goes) light enough for me to move without mechanical assistance, but adding more weight would make that less and less possible. But Armsmaster had his own physical strength as a starting point, amplified by his powered armor. Since I was starting with less power, any suit of armor I made would have to be far more powerful than his if I wanted to match it. And if he was as good a Tinker as the articles claimed, odds were that his suit was already pushing the limits of how much you could augment human strength before just building a really big robot that mimicked your movements.

I'd have to find a better way to exert force than using powered armor. If I stayed on that path, I'd always be second-best, since even spending a ton of time at the gym wouldn't make my reflexes or coordination any better. So I would find a method more suitable to my particular skills. Something more like…Dragon's technique.


	5. Arc 03-1: Iron

Drones! Drones were the answer. They were a lot easier to build than power armor, since they don't have to wrap around and adjust to an organic shape. Even better, you don't have to mess about with hatches or seams— always the weakest point in any armor system. I popped open AutoCad and started sketching, again. A rectangular, coffin-sized body would hold the power and ammunition supply, as well as all the electric engines. Four sets of treads, to allow for redundancy in case some were disabled. A low, sloping turret with a low-power railgun inside. It would fire low-velocity paintballs, or normal-velocity bullets, should the situation call for it.

I was frowning over the ammunition feeding system when I was interrupted by Mr. Lesterton standing up. "Welp, it's time to go do some haggling. You feel like coming out? I suppose you could take notes."

I nodded and set down my computer, following Mr. Lesterton out the door. We both got into his shiny new BMW and roared off to visit the scrapyard. On the ride over, Mr. Lesterton explained.

"This particular yard isn't one of our main suppliers, so when we buy from them we negotiate a short contract instead of long-term commitments. When supply drops from the usual yards, we come here to shore up the drop so that production doesn't fall. But if there's a good year, a lot of scrap tends to pile up here. The guy in charge is what I guess you'd call an odd bird. I'm pretty sure he only contracts with us when he runs out of money, and the rest of the time it all just seems to…sit there."

I nodded.

"Anyway, so this fellow just kind of sits on the outskirts of town with a giant field full of rusty crap. He's useful, but he can also be a bit stubborn. We'll see if he's in the mood to be reasonable when we get there."

I nodded again.

Mr. Lesterton made a valiant attempt to keep the conversation alive for the rest of the drive, but when only one member of the conversation is capable of speech, this is a difficult feat. After a while, we lapsed into silence, and finished the drive in that state.

The scrapyard was more or less what everyone expects of the word. It was a wide, open field surrounded by a fence of rusty barbed wire. Within, piles of cars and small appliances loomed beneath wide plastic sheets to protect them from rain. The yard was surrounded by a ten-foot chain link fence, topped with curls of barbed wire. The fence poles were rusty, but it was clear a good deal of effort had gone into preserving the entire facility, even if the contents themselves were just piles of rusty junk. The same could be said of the small guard shack that squatted at one corner of the only visible gap in the fence, a ten-foot wide gate spanned by a simple wooden beam.

Mr. Lesterton's car rumbled to a halt on the expanse of damp gravel thats served as a parking lot. Mr. Lesterton and I emerged, and were greeted by a yell from inside the guard shack.

"Who's there? I'm armed, you know!"

"Real friendly guy, huh?" Lesterton drawled.

I snorted. The door of the guard shack opened, and the barrel of a 12-gauge shotgun emerged. It tracked over to our direction, and then lowered as the man himself came into view. I placed him at around sixty-five going on seventy, with white, thinning hair and deep set eyes. He held the gun with steady hands, and even relaxed I saw that it could have been brought up at a moment's noticed.

"Phil. You bought a guest!" the old guy exclaimed, giving no indication that he'd been about four seconds away from shooting at us.

"That I did." Mr. Lesterton agreed. "This is my intern— I'll tell him not to mention that little trick with the shotgun, don't you worry."

"Well, call me Bill." The old guy said. "What's your name, Mr. Intern?"

"He's mute." Mr. Lesterton stepped in when I didn't answer. "Come on, Bill. We've got to discuss this statement you sent to my office."

Bill ignored him, and to my surprise signed _what's your name?_ in flawless ASL.

"D-A-V-E" I spelled out.

"Well howdy then, Dave!" Bill grabbed my hand and shook it hard. "Let's go see what your boss has his panties in a twist over."

Mr. Lesterton had already let himself into the guard shack, and was looking over the papers strewn on the big desk that occupied the wall to the left of the door. The whole edifice looked like someone had mashed together an office, a living room, and a guard shack into a single confused whole. The controls for the gate itself were next to the door, with a small window looking out onto the property. Across from the desk, a thick sofa sat before a coffee table, with a book-stuffed shelf leaning next to it. The rear wall formed a small kitchenette, dishes filling the small drying rack next to the coffee maker.

"Take a seat." Bill invited Mr. Lesterton and I, shooing the former with polite but firm motions away from the desk and into the sofa. I sat down next to him as Bill went past us and started up the battered plastic coffee machine in the kitchenette.

"So about this new shipment of aluminum you're selling," Mr. Lesterton tried to continue, "We're willing to pay between five thousand and twenty thousand, depending on impurity levels and shipping costs. I'd like to run a few quick analysis of the metal in question to confirm—"

"Of course." Bill agreed, turning around with three mugs giving of a thin veil of steam. "But first, coffee."

He thumped down the three mugs onto the coffee table. "Phil, you take yours black, right?"

"You've got a good memory." Mr. Lesterton agreed. "Now, with bulk metals—"

 _How do you like your coffee?_ Bill signed.

 _Two sugars, no milk._ I answered. Mr. Lesterton just watched the exchange, looking a little confused. Bill added the requested ingredients, then set about dumping six sugars and half the pitcher of cream into his own mug. He lifted it and took a deep inhale of the aroma. "I find that coffee makes talking business much more bearable, wouldn't you agree?" he said to Mr. Lesterton.

"Of course." Mr. Lesterton agreed. "Now, as I was saying…"

After another hour in the guard shack listening to Bill Hallowell and Phil Lesterton argue about pricing and shipping of scrap aluminum, we headed out into the damp of the late morning to inspect the scrap itself. Bill also insisted on a tour around the entire facility, which I found interesting but Mr. Lesterton seemed to have seen it several times already. It was about four hours before we arrived back at the office, where Mr. Lesterton flopped into his desk chair and put an arm over his eyes.

"I swear to Christ that old bastard just wants to torment me," he moaned. "It's the same damn song and dance every time I go there. ' _Here, let's have some coffee. Are you sure you're leaving so soon_?'" he continued in a mocking tone. "Blah, blah blah. That man has no concept of time other than his own, and he just lives to make other people dance to his schedule. God, I hate that." He sighed, opened up his computer and started tapping away at a furious rate. "And now I'm three hours behind on all my work, as usual. Be a champ and grab me another coffee, hey? Four sugars and two things of cream. Hallowell always pretends it's something else."

I arrived in my new home at around five thirty, somehow exhausted despite doing nothing more strenuous than serve as Lesterton's errand boy all day. The apartment was barren and cramped, looking a lot like a prison cell. I opened up the few boxes of stuff I'd brought- mostly tools and a few of the smaller, more valuable trinkets I'd built. I'd need something a lot more impressive if I wanted the Protectorate to take me in, but at least I had a start. The drone-based combat idea that had occurred to me in the morning would be a good starting point, but it would be materials-intensive, a problem that was made worse by my new location. There wouldn't be a lot of abandoned farm machinery around here.

After locking the apartment back up, I decided my next best move would be to start scouring the city for new suppliers of parts. And I had a pretty good idea of where to start. A brisk half-hour drive saw me pulling in to the gravel parking lot of Bill Hallowell's scrapyard.

"Who's there? I'm armed, you know!" he bellowed as I stepped out of the car. The 12-gauge shotgun emerged, with Bill following it. His eyebrows went up in surprise as he saw me standing in front of my car.

 _Dave, what brings you here?_ he signed.

 _I'm just looking for now,_ I answered, cautious. _I'm working on_ —I paused to look up the symbol in my pocket dictionary— _a project of my own_.

"A project, eh? When you're not taking notes?" Bill laughed. I hadn't actually even had a piece of paper to write on during the last visit. I joined in the laughter, a little uncomfortable. "Really though, what's the situation?" Bill asked me, his voice kinder now. He seemed to understand I was still getting used to ASL and spoke when it would be hard to communicate the ideas by sign.

It took a bit of time, but I explained the deal with the internship— getting hired for a statistic on their brochures to make the company look better, and how it meant my job consisted of little more than waiting in an office to be instructed to do menial tasks.

"That's rough, kiddo." Bill sympathized. "But why're you coming here? Shouldn't you go shoot the breeze with all the other young people?"

 _Like I said, I'm doing a project_ I answered. _I was hoping to buy some supplies from you._

"And what sort of supplies would those be?"

I paused to show him the list I'd assembled.

"What the hell do you need a thousand five-by-twenty steel plates for?" Bill demanded as he read through the list. "Seven heavy-duty electric motors? Five tons of sheet steel? What the hell kind of project is this?"

 _I need to…_ I paused. _Give some proof that I'm worth having._ I finished. I'd let him interpret that with what information he had.

Bill thought about it for a while, rubbing his chin. "Alright." He said. "I'll give you a discount, if you like. And I've got a decent machining shop, though I'll have to charge you for time, too."

We haggled —it was slow-paced, because of ASL— but we managed to agree on a price that wouldn't leave me eating out of Dumpsters, but enough to keep Bill satisfied he wasn't giving things away for free to random kids off the street. It was agreed that any damage I did to the equipment would also be paid out of my own pocket. At last we shook hands once more, and Bill brought me in to the guard shack for some more coffee. He remembered the way I liked mine, and I sipped it as he gathered up the hands that worked around the property to haul together the materials on the list.

The steel would be first. I had never used a blowtorch before, but my tinker abilities made it no big deal I snapped the heavy mask on over my face, put in my earbuds, and queued up a Led Zeppelin playlist, starting with the only obvious choice for this situation: Immigrant Song. To the sound of Robert Plant screaming about Valhalla, cold steel met white-hot flame.


	6. Arc 03-2: Iron

CLANG.  
A forty-pound chunk of steel slammed into the ground, still smoking at one end where I'd sliced through it with a plasma torch. I turned off the white-hot flame and pushed up the welding mask to let the somewhat cooler outside air blow through the tarpaulin-covered area that had evolved into my workshop over the past few weeks. The scrapyard tended to be a quiet place for most of the time, exceptions being on delivery days when thousands of tons of assorted metal were dumped in a huge pile in the center, workmen swarming all over to sort the stuff into different piles.  
Today was one of the more quiet days, and I saw Bill lounging about with several of his employees on top of stacks of car transmissions, trading jokes and cigarettes. Maybe he felt my gaze, because he waved me over, patting a flat-topped chunk of machinery next to him.  
I set down the plasma torch, checking that it was turned off before I left it alone. "Dave!" Bill exclaimed as I walked over. "Allow me to introduce you to these fine gentlemen!" He pointed around the circle. "That's my grand-nephew, Samson." A tall, burly man, arms laden with tattoos, nodded. "—Next to him is Adam, he also works in the steel mill sometimes." Adam was a middle-aged black man, bald as an egg with a thick beard. He waved hello. "And then there's Jake- he works the crane when we need it." Jake was the smallest, with carrot-colored hair and a deluge of freckles. "And last but certainly not least is our resident wise guy, Jason." Jason was around my age, I suspected. He also outweighed me by somewhere between a hundred and fifty to two hundred pounds, all of it muscle.  
"Pleasure." He rumbled, and extended a hand to shake. I took it, and he was at least merciful enough not to break my fingers, though it was a close thing. I sat down on the indicated engine block as the conversation resumed— something about football.  
"Dave!" a Bill called abruptly. "Who are you rooting for this weekend?"  
 _I didn't know there was a game._ I signed. _Who's playing?_  
"He didn't know there was a game." Bill translated. There was a round of good-natured laughter, and the six of them set about the task of explaining the intricacies of professional football fanhood. It took a little bit of time, with Bill providing translations for my signs, but the others caught on faster than I would have believed, and even as I learned about football, it turned into a game of "guess what Dave is saying."  
"Want one?" Jason asked me at one point. I looked down to see him holding a cigarette out to me. I hesitated.  
"Once won't kill ya." Bill advised. "Just don't make a habit like the rest of these idiots." That got a laugh from Samson, Jason, and Adam, all of whom had a lit cigarette between their lips.  
"I took the cigarette with great care, holding it like I was afraid it would burn me. Jason applied his lighter to one end, and I touched it to my lips and inhaled. It was like taking a deep breath of a recently-used fireplace. Hot, choking gases flowed down my throat, and I doubled over, coughing.  
"Jason chuckled. "You'll get used to it."  
 _Not sure if I want to_ , I signed, a little clumsily since I was still holding the cigarette.  
"Fair enough. You gonna finish it?"  
I shook my head, and he hooked the cigarette back out of my fingers and took a long pull. "You're in college, right?" he asked.  
I nodded.  
"And you're in Brockton for an internship that the boss says isn't going so well, yeah?"  
I nodded again.  
"So why don't you go to the city, find some friends? Why's a smart kid like you hanging around in a scrapyard?"  
 _How would I talk to them?_ I signed. I pointed at the whiteboard I sometimes still used. _That's too slow for a conversation._  
"I dunno. But it oughta be more fun than staying here, with whatever project you're working on."  
 _I like working on this stuff_ , I signed.  
"He shrugged. "Your call, I guess."  
The sound of a truck backing up cut through the small gathering, and everyone but me groaned and stood up.  
"Damn truck is late again." Bill grumbled. Then, louder, "alright, you loafers! Go do your job!"  
Everyone stood up and headed off to the loading bay, where a new load of scrap had arrived. Bill clapped me on the shoulder as he moved off to supervise, leaving me standing in an empty circle of flat-topped machinery. For a second, I had the reckless urge to chase down Bill and explain everything. But it passed, and I realized what a dumb idea that would be. I barely knew these people, why on Earth should I trust them? Every cape and non-cape knew that your real name and face were a terrible weapon to give your opponents. Bill knew my name, and where I worked. It could be worth his while to ask a few questions back with my boss if a villain would pay, especially once I got into the Protectorate. Feeling somehow more alone than I had before the gathering, I headed back to my work space and started up the plasma torch once more.  
The machine I had started on in the last few weeks was coming together. For the moment, only the lower half was even near to completion— Four wide sets of treads, one for each corner. They were driven by an equal number of powerful electric engines, with heavy-duty suspension and hydraulic brakes. The power supply was half-done— twenty rechargeable car batteries hooked up together into the beginnings of the autonomous navigation system I was devising. I was still working on how I'd disguise what I was making from Bill, so for the moment I'd just told him it was a private matter. Covered in a thick sheet every night, it could have been anything, and I trusted that politeness would overrule curiosity for a paying customer.  
The tricky part at the moment was the turret. I'd need something nonlethal, obviously, but I also wanted enough power to get a villain who wasn't impressed by normal weapons. So I had settled on a variable-input system. Using a system of magnetic coils, the main gun would accept damn near any solid object of the right size, and could propel it from anywhere between the speed of a baseball thrown by a third-grader up to and including Mach 3. The downside of such a mechanism was, of course, its complexity. Tinker devices are notorious for being high-maintenance, so this went double for my new system.  
So I armored it. While it would have been easier and lighter (and _way_ cheaper) to use simple aluminum or low-grade steel, I hand-cut every single piece of the gun's action from high-carbon steel, mixed with a few other elements in order to create an alloy of my own devising. It was a weird, eerie experience as every pice slotted home flawlessly. Usually even the best-machined parts need a little cajoling to stick in place, but every single component slid home like it had been done a thousand times before. Almost in a trance, I worked until I heard the good-natured joking of Bill and his crew as they returned from the loading dock to clock out. I slid the cloth back over the Thunderstorm Mk. 1 and set about putting my tools away.

* * *

The following day saw me back in Lesterton's office with my laptop open while he bullied, begged, and bargained his way into a variety of smaller shipments of processed scrap to feed the company's smelters.  
"—Five thousand is perfect. Pleasure doing business." Lesterton set down the phone for the fourth time in an hour and leaned back in his chair, pinching the bridge of his nose. "God, what a bunch of idiots!" he groaned. He had all of four seconds to relax before the buzzer went off on the phone once more. "What?" he demanded, holding down the intercom button.  
"Mr. Lesterton, the tour group is here." Mrs. Temmell, the secretary, said.  
"The tour-" Lesterton cut himself off and rubbed his forehead. "Dammit. I forgot I'd agreed to lead that stupid tour." He heaved a sigh. "Dave, go fetch me a coffee and meet me in the foyer. Grab one for yourself as well."  
I nodded and headed off at a quick pace. When I got back to the foyer, it was crowded with old people. I counted around twenty, with a mean age of, say, sixty. Lesterton was in one corner of the room, speaking in quick and urgent tones to Mrs. Temmell.  
"Dave, good." He said, snagging the coffee. "These are all managers of metal working businesses in Boston."He explained, _sotto voce_. "They're considering buying pre-smelted metal from us to ship it into Boston, where the environmental laws are a bit stricter. During negotiations, I offered to give them a tour of the facility. Not my best idea."  
I nodded, and he clapped me on the shoulder. "Send me more like this one." He said to Mrs. Temmell. "No whining, no questions, just does what he's told." Without waiting for a response, he turned to address the crowd at large.  
"Ladies and Gentlemen!" he called. The group of gossiping geriatrics quieted and shuffled around to see who was talking. "We'll be starting the tour now," Lesterton continued once the sound had died down a bit."Since we're heading out to the main smelting floor, I need everyone to take a hard hat before we set out."  
"There was another commotion as the hard hats were passed out. Lesterton gave me a shove, indicating I should go around and make myself useful. I helped pass around hard hats, then put one on myself. Although I couldn't say I had much fondness for the leadership of Empire Recycling, I was curious to see where the real work happened.  
"We passed through a series of reinforced doors plastered in the usual warning signs, before passing out into the huge open space that was the smeltery. For safety reasons, Lesterton explained, the tour wouldn't be going down to the main floor itself, where workmen scuttled back and forth among the tangle of conveyor belts, smelters, and pipes. It was hot and stuffy, with the constant, loud drone of the machinery as it ground away through copper, aluminum, and a round dozen other metals I could name.  
"Watching the smeltery work gave me an odd feeling. I saw the processes in my head: the kinetic action of the conveyors, the heat-convection of the furnaces that blazed. New ideas and designs poured into my head like the Niagara pouring into a bucket, and I winced. Here, I could readjust the furnace to power the conveyor belts with waste heat. A system to increase the heat tolerance of the runoff grooves by 182%. Increase the impact resistance of the no. 12 sorter by 34%, adjust the alloy mixture to include 0.003% more chromium. Step down voltage on the M57 electric motor to reduce waste heat and decrease belt wear by 4 mm 14WIncreaseaemngularmome _ntumofthedrivebeltby14radianspersecondformaximized_ …  
Lesterton snapped his fingers under my nose. "Hey, cut that out."  
"I blinked, to see most of the tour group staring at me. "Is he all right?" someone at the back asked.  
"I looked at Lesterton and gave him a nod. "He's all right." Lesterton said. He gave me a false smile and patted my back. "Dave here is a part of our disability outreach program, he's on an internship as my assistant. He has these attack sometimes, but he's otherwise a very good helper. Why don't you head back to the office for a bit, Dave."

"Humiliation warred with anger, but I did my best to not let it show. I gave Lesterton a curt nod and headed back to the office. Inside, I saw his computer still turned on. In his haste to go to the tour group, he'd left it unlocked. I sat down in the chair behind the desk and looked at the spreadsheets and emails it displayed. Pretty much all of them weren't of much use to me, I didn't have the skills to hide an order of pure platinum or something inside his own work. But I could hope that my Tinker ability gave me just barely enough tech-savviness to use the computer as a stepping-stool to the larger company network. After a good deal of hunting around inside the servers, I found the connection between the company's network and the computers that sorted the scrap and sent it to the smelters. I made a few adjustments, and left an instruction that for every five hundred batches of whatever the smelters were making, there would be one batch of my own, custom alloy. I gave it a rarely-used area as the collection point, where the ingots of finished metal would be deposited for me to ship out when needed.  
"I suppose what I'd done was stealing, but I was too angry to really care much about that. As far as I was concerned, it wasn't going to steal too much of their profits, and I was entitled to a little bit of compensation for what they'd put me through. Besides, if they ever did catch me, they'd probably thank me— the alloy I'd designed was lighter than aluminum but ten times stronger than steel. It would be perfect for the Thunderstorm Mk 1. All I had to do was get it shipped from the warehouse here to Bill's scrapyard.  
"I put everything on the computer back where it belonged, and resumed my seat, taking up my laptop. A few minutes later, Lesterton reentered the room and flopped into his chair. "God, what a bunch of morons!" he sighed. "I set all this up for them, busting my ass for weeks to try and get them to bite, and all I get from the lot of them is 'we'll think about it'. Bunch of self-entitled shitheads, I hope the next Endbringer goes to Boston."  
"I raised my eyebrows at that, and Lesterton saw my look. "His eyes narrowed. Look, kid, you take what the world gives you. The truth is, I'd be better off if Boston got hit by an Endbringer, so that's what I'm gonna hope for." He sighed. "You couldn't have had your little fainting spell somewhere else, could you? I had to take another twenty minute just talking about the stupid diversity program because of that."  
"The last bit of guilt about stealing company property left me. I shrugged at Lesterton and smiled. _I'll work on it_ , I wrote.


	7. Arc 03-3: Iron

"You look like you had a bad day." Bill noted as I trudged through the gate.  
I nodded.  
"Something at work?"  
I nodded again.  
"Why don't you come inside. I'll put some coffee on."  
I was about to protest it was too late in the afternoon for coffee, but Bill had already disappeared back inside. I sighed and followed him in.  
Coffee with Bill had become sort of a tradition on the days I wasn't spending the mornings in Lesterton's office. I took my usual seat on the couch, while Bill relaxed in his armchair, the desk shoved away towards one wall. For a while, neither of us said -or signed- anything. I tasted the coffee, set the mug back down, trying to fill the silence without saying anything. Bill just let the silence stretch out.  
 _I don't think I can keep doing this internship._ I signed.  
Bill nodded.  
 _But I can't just quit, either. I'm behind enough with a missing semester already. If I leave this, I'll never be able to get a job._  
"Sometimes it's good to know when to cut your losses, you know." Bill pointed out. "I've seen you working here, you've definitely got the talent to be an engineer— one bad job shouldn't affect the rest of your career."  
I set down the cup of coffee. _I'm just not sure._ I signed. _My life is already kind of a mess right now. I don't want to screw it up further._  
"You're still young." Bill advised. "You got plenty of time to fix things up if they don't work out. Take opportunities when you see them and you'll end up in a better place than running a scrapyard." He chuckled at that. "You should only stay the course if you're going in the right direction."  
He was right, I realized. My world had changed, and I needed to be able to change with it.

I arrived at the PRT headquarters an hour early, just in case. I'd had the foresight to pack a suit when I'd rented the apartment, but I also brought the remote I'd built for the Thunderstorm Mk1. I had also begged an old trailer off of Bill, and had driven the drone tank onto it. Fortunately he hadn't stuck around to watch, so I just threw a tarpaulin over the top. It was smaller than a real tank, so it fit without much issue onto the trailer, and didn't have any obvious silhouette. My old Focus's engine sounded a little strained, but the modifications I'd added gave it a bit of an edge, and I pulled away from Bill's gravel parking lot with a friendly wave.  
I got more than a few odd looks as I drove down the highway, a huge, tarpaulin-covered trailer being pulled behind a straining station wagon. The looks got more concerned as I pulled up to the PRT building, which was guarded by two masked men carrying machine guns. The gate was shut, and I pulled up to the guard shack next to it and handed him a slip of paper.  
My name's David Fraser. I'm afraid I can't talk, but I do have an appointment. If there's any information you need from me, just ask and I'll write down my answer."/p  
The guard took it, eyed me for a minute, then turned to the phone. "Hey, I got this guy David Fraser out here, says he's got an appointment?"  
A pause. The guard nodded. "Okay. Head on in."  
The gate lowered, and with a loud whine from the engine, I lurched back into motion. The parking lot had several spaces for the big vans the PRT used, one of which was empty. It took me more than I'd have liked to park my car and its trailer, but I managed to finish before I was due to go in. As at last I pulled in to an empty spot, leaving the trailer next to my car, I saw a big, bearded guy watching me. As I got out of the car, he fixed me with a brief glare and walked to what must have been his own vehicle, a slick-looking sports car. I realized he must have been watching my clumsy attempts to park the trailer and felt my face heat a little. _Way to make a first impression, doofus_. I thought.  
Once inside, I was directed to a smallish office where a man who looked in his early forties was waiting. As I walked in, he set down the book he'd been reading and stood up to shake my hand. "Nice to meet you, Mr. Fraser." He greeted me. "I'm Alex Gardener, and I'll be conducting your interview."  
" _Pleased to meet you, Mr. Gardener"_ I wrote.  
"That's right— you mentioned in your application that you lost the ability to speak in an accident. Might I ask if you became a parahuman around the same time?"  
I nodded. Gardener sighed a little. "These things happen— we're still not sure why. Still, it seems you've escaped more intact than most."  
" _I count myself fortunate._ " I wrote in agreement.  
"Agreed. Now, you also said you were a tinker who specializes in armored vehicles, correct?"  
I nodded again. " _I have a sample outside_ " I wrote, and Gardener raised his eyebrows.  
"I'd like to see that later, but for now let's work on some of the basics. What sort of improvement do you think you could bring to the Brockton Bay parahumans team?"  
" _Using my armor, I can apprehend more dangerous villains than most other capes— my tanks can employ nonlethal means to capture people too dangerous for another person to approach. Since there are a lot of powerful Brute and Breaker types in Brockton bay, drone-type operations can be used to minimize casualties."_  
It took a long time to write all that out, by Mr. Gardener seemed in no hurry. He waited for me to finish each section and read it aloud before I erased it to keep writing.  
"That's an interesting idea, Mr. Fraser." He said. "You say you can use what I believe Dragon calls 'telepresence' to apprehend villains and other criminals, but my concern is what might happen if the signal to control these drones is hijacked. They could go from an asset to a threat very quickly."  
"My drones aren't controlled by simple commands," I wrote. I pulled the glove I'd designed out of my pocket and showed him. "The glove transmits coded combinations of hand gestures to issue basic parameters of operation. The onboard software does the rest."  
Mr. Gardener nodded. "I see." was all he said. "Now what was it, specifically, that drew you to the Brockton Bay area in particular?"  
" _Simple proximity for the most part._ " I wrote. " _As I said before, the numbers of villains who employ brute power over subtlety are what I'm most suited against._ "  
"And you feel confident that you could handle yourself against such villains, even though you don't have any prior combat or police experience?"  
" _That's why I'm applying here._ " I wrote. " _As a part of a much larger group, I can rely on people with more experience in actual cape work to help me employ my own abilities safely and efficiently._ "  
"And— I'll be blunt— you don't think your speech impediment will make this a difficult proposition for your teammates?"  
" _It may._ " I admitted. " _However, even without formal training I know a lot of signals in police operations are nonverbal anyways._ "  
"We're pretty different from the police." Mr. Gardener pointed out. "Nevertheless, I think you've answered all the questions I have for the moment. You mentioned something of a demonstration?"  
I nodded.  
"We have a test range for this sort of thing out back. I'll meet you there."  
It was the work of only a few minutes to escort the Thunderstorm Mk. 1 over to the range, where a series of targets had been set up.  
"Let's see what you're made of, mr. Fraser." Gardener said.  
" _Which setting would you like to see?_ " I wrote.  
"Let's start with something nonlethal." He said.  
I selected the paintball rounds, pointed at the target, and fired. Bright red paint splattered everywhere, shaking the ballistic gel target but not damaging it. Without waiting, I selected the next target, switched to stunners, and fired again. The metal-cored rubber bullet spat out of the barrel and smacked into the second dummy with a loud THUNK. I selected a third target, selected birdshot, and fired again. This time there was a clattering sound as a low-velocity cloud of birdshot sprayed out of the barrel and impacted a third dummy. There wasn't enough speed to do a lot of damage, but a few pellets stuck into the gel as the rest scored and marred it. Gardener raised an eyebrow at that, but gestured to continue.  
I rolled my thumb in a weird fashion that indicated the full-power shot, and pointed a finger gun at the target. As my thumb came down, the railgun fired. There was a loud crack, and the dummy ceased to exist, as well as a large chunk of the earthen embankment behind it. Bits of stone and dirt clattered to the ground, some skittering close to our feet, a hundred feet away from the center of the explosion.  
A few seconds later, Gardener's mouth closed. "We'll be in touch, mr. Fraser. You should get an email in a week or so with our decision."  
" _Thank you._ " I wrote.  
"I suppose. In the meantime, be very careful where you point that thing." He turned and headed back inside, which I took to be my dismissal. On my way back out, I felt several people watching me. But every time I turned, no one was there.

"Next order of business." Armsmaster said as he set aside the thick manila folder of incident reports and pulled the next one out. All of the other members of the Brockton Bay Protectorate were present, with the exception of Challenger, who was on patrol. "We've received another application to join the Protectorate, from a tinker who calls himself…'Boiler-Plate'." Armsmaster opened the folder and passed around the brief transcript inside.  
"Real name is David Fraser, he's a Tinker who appears to specialize in making armored vehicles. He showed up with what he claimed was a prototype- offered the interviewer a chance to see his abilities up close."  
"And?" Assault prompted.  
"He left a ten-foot wide crater in the back side of the range." Armsmaster replied. No one in the room registered any shock; destroying the range outright was well within any individual's abilities. "Personally," Armsmaster continued, "I think the kid's something of a one-trick wonder. He's got the potential for a decent wallop, but it's tactically inflexible. He's better equipped to start a war than stop a bank robbery."  
"Hm." Dauntless held up the page slightly as he inspected it, leaning back in his chair. "It also says the tank had three different kinds of nonlethal rounds, plus room for two more that weren't filled. What about canisters of containment foam?"  
"We might as well just send a PRT squad at that point." Sere pointed out. "And at least a strike team would be able to call for help if they needed it. This one's mute."  
Dauntless re-inspected the sheet. "Huh, that does seem like an issue. Still, even if he's no good for regular patrols, imagine the throw weight he could put down against an Endbringer."  
Miss Militia nodded. "A few tinker-made tanks could be pretty useful against the larger threats."  
Armsmaster shook his head. "The issue there is there'd be no foundation in working with other caps. If we're only going to use him for bigger threats, he'd be worse than useless at coordinating as part of a team, and Endbringers are the worst time for that kind of potential friendly fire."  
"You seem pretty against this one." Dauntless remarked.  
"I am." Armsmaster agreed. "I think he's a danger to anyone he's teamed up with, as well as himself."  
"If I didn't know better," Assault drawled, "I'd say you were trying to keep other tinkers out of Brockton Bay. Is Kid Win enough competition already?"  
"That's hardly the issue." Armsmaster answered, undisturbed by all outward appearance. "This young man is just too hard to control to have around- imagine the collateral damage even one stray shot could cause."  
Miss Militia raised an eyebrow at that. "Who said anything about the front lines?" she proposed. "What about a support position— he'd be an asset to improving the motor pool. Besides, he's said that his drones were inspired by Dragon's. It would make sense to adopt the same strategy of sending unmanned robots rather than accompanying them. We keep him in sight"— she nodded at Armsmaster "—yet we still get the advantage of his abilities."  
"Seconded." Assault said. Dauntless and Velocity both nodded their agreement as well.  
"Who's against, besides me?" Armsmaster asked. Sere and Triumph both raised their hands. No one else cast their lot in.  
"All right." Armsmaster sighed. "I'll talk to Director Piggot, and we'll see about clearing out a new workshop." He set the folder aside and pulled out another one. "Now, as for the status of the Wards program…"

I almost knocked the laptop off the table when I checked my email a few days later. I was in! For a good minute or so I didn't move, a huge grin spreading across my face. Then I leapt up and grabbed my jacket, intending to head over to Bill's again. It was earlier than my usual time, but today I was fizzling with energy. My hands were a little shaky, and my breath came a little fast as excitement filled me. I was a real, live cape now. I'd go on patrols and catch villains— and one day I'd catch up with Bakuda.  
I rolled up to the scrapyard and hopped out of the car with a wide smile on my face. Bill came out of his shack, frowning a little. My own grin faded as I saw the object he was holding with one hand. It was my first version of the Boiler-Plate helmet.


End file.
